A couple of days ago from my posting this was the 26th anniversary of the memorable 1992 film, "My Cousin Vinny", starring Joe Pesci and Marissa Tomei. This is also a movie that car-guys like myself can relate to, for it touches on and references vintage GM products, circa early though mid-1960s. Those cars would be some 30 years old, give or take, and be antiques at the time of the film's production and release. However, today, in 2018, the vehicles that were new and late-model at the time of My Cousin Vinny's release would now be antiques themselves, and greater than 25-years old!

With today's advancement in voice-recognition, and systems like Siri, it still would not have been applicable to the likes of Harpo Marx, Charlie Chaplin, The Pink Panther, Clarabelle the Clown, Silent Bob (except where he has brief dialogue to save the plots), and someone with a bad case of laryngitis.

Back in the mid-1970s, after the first (and phoney) gas-shortage/energy-crisis, a national 55-mph speed limit was imposed (the worst obeyed law since prohibition, and thank goodness that it's long-passed). As a result, most automotive speedometers were set to read up to 80-85mph, with an emphasis at 55mph in the readout, from mainly the mid 80s thorough the mid-late 80s, into some early 1990 (my old 1993 Ford Explorer's speedometer topped at 85). This was likely in effort to discourage excessive speeds and encourage to be more economy-minded.

Now, starting over 30 years back, 65-mph limits came back in some states, and now most are 70, 75, and some 80-mph, and a highway in Texas at an 85-mph limit! Automotive speedometer readouts went back to at least 120-mph, and most now being 140 and 160-mph, this now gives the vehicles a better image as well as more attitude. Of course on a closed-course race-track day, or a lengthy desert highway out west, with no one around, one will test the car's limits.

Now, a point here being, today, one driving a now vintage vehicle from the mid-70s thorough the mid/late 80s today on many given highways and expressways, you'll really bury the speedometer needle easily, and cruise over the readout's max.